Allegations that a drunken executive uttered a racial expletive and slapped a 19-month-old toddler for crying on a plane describe behavior so reprehensible there really was no other choice for a Day’s Worst.

This is how the criminal complaint, filed in Minneapolis federal court, described the incident:

Jessica Bennett, 33, of Minnesota, told FBI agents that on Feb. 8 she and her son, Jonah, were passengers on a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta. Bennett said the aircraft was in its final descent when the boy began to cry due to the altitude change.

The mother told the FBI she was trying to get her son to stop crying, but he continued. A male passenger seated next to her, later identified as Hundley, “told her to shut that [‘N word’] baby up.”

“I said, ‘What did you just say?'” Bennett said, according to ABC News. “And he was so drunk that he fell onto my face, and his mouth moved over to my ear and he said it, just directly into my ear.”

Bennett told authorities Hundley then turned around and slapped the child in the face with an open hand, which caused Jonah to scream even louder and left a scratch below his eye.

If this scene unfolded the way it has been described, the year in prison that Hundley could upon conviction hardly seems enough.

More than one hundred years ago, John Brisben Walker, our great grandfather, proposed the Denver Mountain Parks system. He and the other founders of the park system understood that access to the wild and open land in the mountains was vital to the quality of life in Denver. Because of their vision and commitment, they protected 14,000 acres, giving us the gift of the Denver Mountain Parks. Read more…

Ronald Reagan preached that taxes are evil and should be cut to the bone. Wanting more money for SUVs, large homes, and more “things,” most people voted for those who promised to cut taxes. When taxes are cut, necessary government programs must be cut. Congress, the President, and state and local entities reduced spending for bridges, safety inspectors, meat and imported goods inspectors, levies in flood plains, emergency response, national parks, hurricane centers, support for local law enforcement, aid to education, medical and psychological services to veterans, health care for the poor …: hundreds of necessary services. Read more…

My 11-year-old grandson and I liked the movie Underdog. We thought it was exciting and funny, and a great takeoff on Superman. The other people in the theater seemed to enjoy it too. Why did you have to print such a snide review, which wasn’t even written by one of your own reviewers, but by some person in Minneapolis! I usually depend on your movie reviews, but was disappointed in this one.

Years ago, the engineering profession felt an obligation to learn as much as possible from structural failures such as the bridge over the Mississippi River at Minneapolis. Such a failure was considered as an experiment that no one wanted to perform, but, once the failure had occurred, there were lessons to be learned that could prevent similar failures. Read more…

Former Senator Andrews on August 5 lamented the influence of “the ‘left'” on our state universities. Well, control by the right certainly implies poor funding for education, correlated to unbalanced and regressive taxation. It also implies economic mismanagement, including diversion of massive resources to an unprovoked and unilateral war in the face of huge neglect of infrastructure (ask the folks in Minneapolis), among other things. Read more…

With the countless dollars continuing to be funneled into the black hole of Iraq and minimal federal dollars to the infrastructure of the United States…It isn’t too great a leap to say that the bridge collapse in Minneapolis was “collateral damage” of the war.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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